Tai Chi Makes A House Call

I was disappointed to learn the story of James Reston's appendectomy and acupuncture in China in 1971 was apocryphal, however much it is recited by devotees of Eastern medicine. Some describe it as the "tipping point" for traditional Chinese medicine in the West. After that report, people began to sit up and take notice. It turns out the article was not a description of his own anesthetization by acupuncture for his emergency appendectomy while visiting China with President Richard Nixon. He did have the appendectomy, but without the aid of acupuncture. With that said, the good news is that the benefits of another aspect of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) have been firmly established. Tai Chi has been proven to benefit people with Parkinson's and other chronic diseases. The New England Journal of Medicine has published a clinical study that clearly establishes Tai Chi has a beneficial effect on PD patients that exceeds those of both weight resistance and stretching exercises. As a practitioner of both in the interest of maintaining my independence, I pursued it further.

Tai Chi is known (albeit up to now, unscientifically) to have benefits to its practitioners, in stress reduction for example. I have been doing a bit of research, and am learning more with every hour I spend. I am spending my time as I usually do—reading about it, even watching a video clip or two. I'm doing this instead of living it, of course. I often read about life as a substitute for actually living it. But, there are some things you have no choice about. One of those is chronic disease. I'm living that one, just now (see Blog Archive on February 10, 2012, The Full Catastrophe).

Into the midst of my usual approach of developing knowledge without making the commitment of actually doing anything about it, strode a friend and a friend of a friend and a friend of that friend (Whew! That was clear, wasn't it?). Well, they did it; I am not making this up. At dinner my friend was listening to her friend describe the findings reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, and she mentioned my interest in the means to do battle with the effects of Parkinson's. They agreed they should put me in touch with a newly-trained Tai Chi Exercise Leader who had some interest in working with people with Parkinson's. So, e-mails were exchanged and we made contact. She, because she had trained for some hours to become an exercise leader and wanted to make use of it, and me because it was time to put up or shut up, so to speak.

Consequently, S__ and I agreed to meet at my home to talk about it—note, we could have "talked about it" over the phone, I knew it would involve some element of practice. It turns out I can be talked into all sorts of things by the right people. I needed a nudge to move from watching and reading to doing and S___ needed a "first victim" to teach. So here I am, my third session is now scheduled, and I am learning Tai Chi. It seems Tai Chi has come and got me—making a house call.